Inventors have high hopes for robotic tree planter

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MAPLE RIDGE — Nick Birch and Tyler Rhodes hope they are unleashing a bit of forestry’s future in a recently cleared patch of forest in the hills above Maple Ridge: the Tree Rover, a robot capable of planting trees.

The concept is pure R&D at this point — think of it as pre-startup, in the terminology of tech business. The third-year electrical engineering students are pursuing it as part of an entrepreneurial co-op term at the University of Victoria.

The exercise is to take an idea and, in four months, create a project that results in a tangible prototype that can be built upon.

For Birch and Rhodes, both Vancouver Island born-and-raised outdoors enthusiasts with a love of electronic engineering, “what better way to being those two together than a tree-planting robot,” said Birch.

They recognize they are toying with an iconic image of the free-spirited, hard-charging B.C. tree planter. But Rhodes said their interest is in figuring out if technology can help reforest the earth’s clear-cut landscapes.

“A lot of people give us that comment, ‘Oh, you’re going to put tree planters out of business,’” Rhodes said. “That’s definitely not our goal.

“We just want to get into the fight against deforestation.”

They recognize they are still a long way away from being able to turn Tree Rover loose in a B.C. forest, after just four months of work, but they hope their prototype is a credible start.

In the current iteration of Tree Rover, the computer-controlled planting mechanism they’ve devised — the heart of the invention — is on top of a bright-orange four-wheeled cart, but they envision a future version on a four-legged vehicle better able to navigate the rugged terrain of a cutblock in a B.C. forest.

“We really ask people to look past the mobility issues for now,” Rhodes said, because they’ve focused most of their attention on the planting mechanism and refining a motion that mimics what a tree planter does so consistently in varying conditions.

“We had to start somewhere,” Birch added. “We believe that once we perfect (the planting mechanism), we can put it on any robot or vehicle and scale that end up.”

The bare-bones prototype was put together for about $1,600, plus donations and scavenged spare parts.

They’ve started an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign looking to raise at least $5,000 to support further development and testing, and Rhodes said what improvements they make on the navigation side of the device will depend on how successful that campaign is.

On a recent Tuesday, they brought their prototype to the University of B.C.’s Malcolm Knapp research forest to give a demonstration to the research coordinator, Ionut Aron, and to scout out good spots for a proper test next spring.

For now, the Tree Rover operates mostly by remote control, with some autonomous functions, so Birch toggles keys on his laptop computer to bring it to life and drive it over to a prepared patch of dirt.

A seedling from the Plexiglas hopper on top drops into a hollow spike at the heart of the rover. Then, with a mechanical hiss of compressed air, the machine drives the spike into the ground. Another arm swings down to tamp the plant more firmly in place and it rolls off leaving the bright green shoot behind it.

Aron walks up to give it the “two-finger test,” gripping the seedling between his thumb and forefinger to give it a gentle tug. It holds, and he nods a small affirmation.

“Obviously it’s a prototype,” Aron said. “In it’s current form, it wouldn’t be able to plant trees in cutblock.”

However, if the concept can be developed, he said automated systems might be able to improve productivity in tree planting, or have applications in remote locations.

Even if the idea can’t get there, Aron said it is still an important exercise in the evolution of forest practices and figuring out what is possible.

“It’s an innovation, and they’re in the right spot, because we’re a research forest, and that’s all we do,” he said.

The industry, however, appears to need some convincing.

“It looks like a great experiment for engineering students,” said John Betts, executive director of the Western Silviculture Contractors Association.

But from what he’s seen of the Tree Rover in online videos, “I don’t think it’s going to make too many tree planters or (contractors) terribly nervous that they’re going to be replaced.”

Tree planting might seem repetitive and monotonous, Betts said, but there is a lot of mental processing involved in evaluating whether one spot is better for planting a tree than another a few feet away, or how far apart to plant seedlings based on conditions.

“Planters are taking up a lot of (mental) bandwidth to do that,” Betts said, and he is skeptical that the Tree Rover would be able to match the nuances that humans can master.

However, in plantation settings where conditions are more uniform, or perhaps in the aftermath of wildfires where the landscape “is completely reduced to white ash,” Betts said planting robots might prove useful, if the entrepreneurs can keep developing it.

Rhodes and Birch know that the rover will have to be bigger to carry more trees and be more mobile. But in their blue-sky dreaming, the envision Tree Rover evolving into a system where vehicles are solar-charged, more robust hydraulics replace pneumatics to drive the planting mechanism and terrestrial rovers are matched with an aerial drone with sensors capable of mapping out a planting plan for the ground-based vehicles to follow, and do so autonomously.

Regardless of how far they are able to take the concept, however, the students have impressed the mentor they enlisted to help them keep the project organized.

“They’ve made something that’s tangible and improvable,” said Daniel Savage, a Victoria-area programmer.

Savage, a UVic computer science grad who also did an entrepreneurial co-op term at the school, said the most valuable lesson Birch and Rhodes have learned is the discipline involved in taking an idea from thin air and systematically building a physical prototype while staying focused on core elements to get the most impact from limited resources.

“It’s very much research and development,” Savage said. “Anything they do (such as) self publishing research, it adds more to the community of applied science.”

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